A WANDERER’S NOTEBOOK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3803, 1 February 1927, Page 17

A WANDERER’S NOTEBOOK.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. XVIII. By Charles Wilson, ex-Parliamentary Librarian. As I leave Southampton on a wet morning. the second only wet day I have met with so far during a long trip, I witness the departure of the giant Berengaria, one of the monsters of the Atlantic trade. The Berengaria is, like my own vessel, the Tuscania, a Cunarder, but there is this difference, that whereas the steamer upon which I am to cross the Atlantic is but some 18,000 tons, the Berengaria, which, before the war, was a German liner, has a gross displacement of 52,226 tons. She is the third largest merchant vessel afloat, and was destined by the ingenious Herr Ballin and other Teutons, including, of course, that champion megalomaniac, Wilhelm the Second, to wipe out British steamship supremacy from the Atlantic trade. Alas! the “best laid schemes of mice and men aft gang agley.” “Veere vos dat barty now?” as Hans Breitman put it. The Berengaria will do the trip in some six days or so. We on the Tuscania, which was built by the Anchor Line five years or so ag will be eight or nine days at sea before we sight the Statue of Liberty. Also, we shall have no vibration to speak of, whereas I hear that on some of the fast steamers the knives and forks fairly rattle on the tables, and your nerves are apt to be dis wrought by the excessive motion. CABIN SHIPS. Millionaires, film stars, and similar aristocrats of travel, may patronise the Berenfaria, the Mauretania, and so forth, but atn quite content with my cabin ship, on which there are but two classes, cabin and tourist cabin, and upon which the table is excellent; the band, thank goodness! not solely devoting its energies to ja-z music, and the first class fare only about half that of the ocean greyhounds. Not that Atlantic travel is not expensive. Trust the benevolent shipping ring for that! As a matter of fact, I pay close unon £34 each for the Atlantic passage of nine days of my wife and myself, and surely that is rather stiff. On the Tuscania, I find, there are quite a number - of passengers in the tourist cabin, around which I am shown one day by a very obliging chief steward, who occupy in their own country quite prominent positions—lawyers, architects, professors, and so on. One of these gentlemen informs me that he has been taken from a city near to Chicago to Europe and back to New York, including three weeks’ stay in London, a fortnight in Paris and sundry other stays in European centres, for the veryreasonable sum of £6O. I do not wonder that many Americans of limited incomes should be patronising the tourist cabin on these ships. The accommodation in the first class I find quite admirable. I . have a stateroom which is most commodious, wardrobes, shelves, and every possible convenience, and, barring an occasional rolling, due to paucity of cargo when the steamer left London, and found freight rather short, there is nothing to complain of. Were I a single man I certainly, if ever I travelled the Atlantic alone, would patronise the tourist cabin. These cabin ships are so popular that I do not wonder the companies concerned are largely increasing this class of accommodation. NEW YORK AT LAST. It is a firTe, clear morning as we steam up the Bay, and, passing Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, with its back significantly turned towards America, get ready for the traditionally dreaded declarations as to place of birth, etc., which Uncle Sam desires of those • ho make his acquaintance for the first time. I may say at once that I experienced no difficulty whatever, either with the immigration officers or with the Customs people. As a matter of fact, the entrance to an American port,

granted you are not going to reside in the country and that you are decent people in every way, is not any more irritating in its details than the regulations at the arrival at a New Zealand port. I myself found Customs officers quite courteous and most obliging. True, that as my baggage was bonded through to Vancouver I scarcely anticipated the officers going through each and every package. But so they did. and this took a little time. During the examination my new Borsalino, which I had purchased at Milan, and never worn, was laid down a moment and forthwith, as if by magic, disappeared. Save that, and having to enter a queue twice, having one package short landed for a while, there was absolutely no bother. I had heard that unless you were careful at the New York wharf someone would “ pinch ” the gold out of your teeth. I have no auriferous adornment of my molars to bother about, but, anyhow,- bar that “ nicking ” of my Borsalino—l believe a wicked carrier man was to blame —I had nothing to complain of. AT A NEW YORK HOTEL. I mercifully spare you any notes on the approach to the North River, on the marvellous group of skyscrapers, the traffic in the river, and so forth. Of this I am sure you have read or heard enough and to spare. A few jottings however, upon the American hotels as I saw them in New York. Of course, if you are an aristocrat of polities, of commerce, and especially if you are a film star or a fashionable mummer, all of whom gravitate naturally to the Waldorf Astoria, or some other of the swell hotels, j'ou will have no trouble in selecting your hostelry. Personally, and happily, I am not of these good people, and a steamer New York business man —recommending me to a purely commercial and family house on Broadway, at the corner of that great thoroughfare and Twenty Ninth street, if I remember rightly, I am installed in one of those spacious bedrooms which, with their almost accompanying bathrooms, are to be found in all decent American hotels. One hears a good deal before one goes to the States of the “ very expensive hotels.” No doubt there are some exceedingly costly places at which to stay, but the traveller of moderate means and reasonable requirements can do himself very well at a fairly medium expenditure. You P a y five dollars for your double room and bath. That s a pound, but the accommodation you get is excellent. The cleanliness is irreproachable and the service very good. Then remember that the dollar, roughly four shillings, is about equal m purchasing power to about three shilling in New Zealand, and that salaries are much higher in America for any responsible positions than is New Zean ? T 7 ’ D and you will see that the hotels are not so dear as I had supposed them to be. MEALS. Ah! that is another question. Abjure, ye economists, the hotel meal. m be very expensive. Just one block from Broadway you can go to an Italian restaurant where you can breakfast for, say, 50 cents, or two shillings, or lunch for about 40 cents, . and so on. Or you can patronise a cafeteria—there is one in the basement of my hotel—and you can have a really excellent meal, in scrupulously clean surroundings for quite a moderate sum. I notice, to my amusement, that two commercial gentlemen, who swap papers with ’J lc * a } . hotel lounge, and who are evidently fairly well treated by their firms as to expenses, for they both smoke costly cigars, are regular patrons of the cafeteria. At first to step along a counter, to help ourself to this or that dish, to mass them together upon your plated salver, pay at tbe cash desk, and then transport the whole affair to a marble, table, there being absolutely no attendance, seems peculiar. But it is astonishing how soon you fall into the ways of the place. We had some meals at the hotel. They were certainly well cooked and well served by negro waiters, but honestly I could “eat,” as the Americans say, for much less outride my hostelry and just as well. As to hotel clerks, bell boys, and the attendants generally, no one could wish for greater courtesy. There is, thank Heaven, no servility, "but on the

other hand every want is quietly attended to. My only trouble was the sadly overheated room. NEW YORK’S FOREIGNERS. One hears, in England, a lot of rather stupid stuff talked about the Anglo Saxon sentiment which is asserted to govern the United States opinion and action, political and otherwise. Frankly, I don’t believe that any such conjunction of sentiment is actually present in America. Unquestionably, Anglo-Saxon heredity does count for something in American opinion, but by no means for so much as English people are pleased to think. You cannot be long in America, more especially New York, before you find how un-English, certainly unBritish, is the sentiment, the outlook of the great mass of the people. Of course there are the Pilgrims and other clubs, which undoubtedly foster friendly sentiment between the two countries, and English and colonial magnates passing through the United States are entertained in certain quarters and made much of. But mention one single question or topic upon which .American sentiment might be expected to assume an English, a British form, and _ the probability is you will be disappointed. The fact is that America has her own static _ base of thought and sentiment, and this is often, you will find, decidedly different from that of the people you have left on the European side of the Atlantic. Such a large proportion of people are of foreign birth or extraction. New York is far more French, German, in its appearance than British. Walk down Broadway and you will see names which display at once a foreign origin. Go down to the North River from Broadway, or, on the other hand, stroll down to the East Side, and for one man _ or woman who seems to exhibit British origin, you will see 20 who are clearly of. German, Polish, Slavonic, or Latin extraction. Just now, the" United States has put a brake upon the at one time unrestricted European emigration to her shores. But in the past there was very little such restraint, and the result is seen at once. There are whole quarters which are German, or Polish, or Latin—quarters where but very little English is spoken, where, there are theatres playing foreign plays in a foreign language, and the newspapers printed in a foreign tongue. The whole outlook of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers is alien to the British soul. THE JEWS IN NEW YORK. I am greatly struck by the enormous number of Jews here. There are, I be liev'e, over a million Hebrews in New York, and the number is constantly increasing. I am told, on good authority, that the Jews are some of the most law-abiding, as they are assuredly some of the most industrious and enterprising -folk in the city, and that they support their charitable and philanthropic institutions with great liberality. Of late years, however, there has crept in a strong criminal element among the younger Hebrews, which is greatly deplored by the community as a whole, and which is the subject of some considerable anxiety among the elder men. While I am here a most desperate attempt is made to escape from the Tombs prison, and it is significant that two of the criminals are of East Side Jews. The wonderful Jewish hospitals I have been, asked to visit, but time prevents my seeing round institutions of which the Jewish community is not unnaturally very proud. SOME NEW YORK SIGHTS. . One can put in a week or so very well in inspecting some of the sights of the city.. I am particularly struck by the exceedingly fine architecture of the buildings. I confess I do not care for the huge skyscrapers which are to be found, mostly ,in a cluster round the lower end of Broadway and up to the very top of one of which, the Woolworth Buildings, of 50 odd atereys, I mhke an excursion. These buildings are very wonderful, no doubt, and from the sea approach add greatly to the rather austere beauty of the scene. Btit I am much more favourably impressed by the more moderately sized buildings up town, especially those on Fifth Avenue, which is certainly one of the greatest and finest thoroughfares that the civilised world possesses. There is far more of tire Boulevard Hausmann in Paris than of a fashionable Landon street about Fifth Avenue. The whole aspect strikes one at once as being far more Continental than British. As for Pennsylvania Rail-

road Station—l beg pardon, depot, pronounced with the accent upon the “de”— I have never seen so fine and completely commodious an entrance to or departure from a railway than is here provided. The style is, I should say, classical Greek, and there is an utter absence of anything like that fiddling ornament which afflicts so many public buildings in the Old World. It is 20 odd years since I was last in New York, and on all sides I notice evidence of a certain degree of quite wonderful advancement. The splendid Astor and Central Library on Fifth Avenue, the equally fine Metropolitan Museum and Art Gallery, the Columbia University Buildings, and other public institutions strike the visitor as being fit and proper evidence of that great spirit of public progress of which the average New Yorker is, and rightly, so proud. I said public, not municipal progress. MUNICIPAL GRAFT. In some respects there still exists much ot that. widespread graft and corruption in municipal affairs that there was 20 years ago, when I was last in Gotham. You can see its evidences in the filthy state of some of the streets. Down town the other morning 1 noticed ashbins and rubbish receptacles which had evidently been standing uncleaned in one quite important commercial thoroughfare for three days or so,- and as for the unevenness, the rough state of some of the leading streets for the motorist, ir, indeed, the average pedestrian, well, you should just hear some ot the local comments. No doubt there is a section which demands municipal honesty and improvement, out there you are; it cries on the housetops, but no one listens or heeds. Tammany rules supreme stronger than ever, as an election for State Governor has just proved here. And no one seems to care twopence. The New York business man may growl and grumble, but he is too intent upon piling up the dollars to bother himself very much about combining and voting for civic decency and righteousness. Anyhow, the advocates of municipal reform are simply snowed under when it - comes to polling day. It is, no doubt, a blessed thing, is “one man one vote.” I confess- I was wont, once, to believe in it, but one grows older and one’s opinions change. “OH, BLEST DEMOCRACY’”! Here, in New Y’ork, the banker, the merchant, the business man, the decent citizen, has one vote. So, too, has every reject of European slumland, and his vote, though he be unable even to speak English, is just as powerful on polling day as that of the really representative citizen. Antonio Maecaroni arrives from Genoa or Naples, Nicholas Epamonides trom tlie currant gardens of Greece, Stefan Paulovski from Moscow, Anton Groftchow from Warsaw, and goodness only knows how many other varieties of ignorant European immigrants. Tammany, through its agents, is lying in wait for them at Castle Garden. It rounds them up, and after a due period registers them and they are ready to vote as they arc duly directed. And Tammany sees that they vote “straight,” and so New York has possibly the most corrupt and downright vicious local government in the world. All the decent people admit this, but they tolerate it. Great is democracy, as you can study it here. But of al! these things you shall read but little, very little, in most of the New York newspapers. They, bless them, are too busily engaged pointing to the militarism of Europe, the effeteness of England, too earnestly anxious to declare to Americans how splendid is the altruism of their country, and so forth, that they have no time left to expose the faults which are there right before their eyes. The mote in the other fellow’s eye prevents them from perceiving the existence of the beam in their own optics. AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS. Every morning at my room is delivered tree of charge one of the two New York newspapers which are reallv worthy of notice, the New York Times in the morn,and New York Evening Post in the afternoon. These are newspapers worthy °f any city and immeasurably superior in the quantity and quality of the news they print and the manner and style of their comments upon public affairs, to anything I have yet seen in print in the United btates. Old newspaper man that I am 1 make a point of reading every paper I can lay my hands on at the hotel, at a club to which I am most hospitably invited, and on the trains. The great majority of the New York papers seem to me to be primarily and almost solely concerned with sensational news—and even this they reproduce with a carelessness and an inaccuracy which is appalling to the oversea Britisher. There is no paper in America that 1 nave seen which comes up to the standard of, say, the Melbourne Argus or Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, or the admirable news sheets which are issued daily in the principal New Zealand cities. Here in New York, in most of the news sheets, which, by the way, are so bulky as to render their very handJ'og' a work of some difficulty, the first thing which receives attention is some story of crime, some tremendously sensational incident. THE HALL CASE. . Just now, in the great majority of the journals, one item of news is starred on the front page. . This is the history of a cause celebre which is occupying the attention of a court of justice at a small New England town. Some years ago a minister of the Gospel one Rev. Dr Hall, was found dead alongside the body of a lady parishioner, who was the wife of his verger and a prominent member of his choir, both stretched alongside each other in a wayside lano. No trace of the murderer or murderers was to be found, and the drama enacted by the roadside was left, presumably unsolved for ever. Now, after five years or so, the whole Hall case is being revived. New evidence has been assembled and the result is the prosecution of the dead man’s widow and her two brothers, who are all charged with haying compassed the deaths of the two victims. I will not say how many witnesses have been brought to the little New England town, how the small hotels of the place are crowded how many reporters are present, x how many lady “special story” writers are doing the case for myriads of newspapers all over the States, how many columns upon calnms of evidence are being printed by the papers. For the larger class of papers the Hall case is the only thing that counts. Mussolini may do this, Poincare that, Baldwin the other. There maj be revolutions

in Mexico and outbreaks against missionaries in China. Anything and everything may happen, but for these American papers nothing matters but the Hall case. I must admit that both the New York Times and the Evening Post, the latter of which is specially favoured, I am told, by the business community, allot this case a. fair but scarcely an undue amount or space, but outside these papers all New York newspaperdom has gone mad. GOOD-BYE, COUSIN JONATHAN. We have been 10 days in New York, and the time has come for “the old ark to be a-moverin" along.” It is a wonderful city, a city of over six millions of people, a city with some of the great millionaires in the world, a city with many beautiful buildings, a city, at this season of the year, happily for us, with a beautiful climate. In winter, I am told, you can freeze here. In the heart of summer the heat is something awful. Just now, for the 10. days of our visit, there is a prolongation of an Indian summer. There is no wind. The days are bright and warm, and I can do the Great White Way—a rather vulgar neighbourhood, by the "way with but a light overcoat. I have experienced’here many kindnesses for the good American is the soul of hospitality, and consideration to the stranger. But honestly, even were I endowed with great wealth, of which there is but the scantiest possibility, I would not care for New York to be my home. It is too big, too hustling. It has too many foreigners; it is an alien city to me, and frankly, mu<sh as I adnnre its wonders, I am glad when the evening comes when we take the for .Montreal and start on a journey which, with a few breaks, is to land us at tar away Vancouver en route to good little New Zealand. Good-bye, Cousin Jonathan. You will have your troubles later on. You, nave a bi<? and awkward negro problem increasing all the time—in Harlem alone there are some hundreds thousand and more negroes. You are tremendously rich, and no doubt you are wonderfully enterprising But, honestly, I don’t think many of you have much sympathv with Great Britain and her interests and troubles. As for New Zealand, few of you have ever heard of such a place. You care very little at heart about the outside world, save about the profits you can o- e t out of it. You will sell to all the world, but buy as little from it as you can. I wish you well, but I am not sorry I am leaving you. As for prohibition.’ lam going to reserve what little I have to say on this question till I am through with your great northern neighbour Canada. Once again, fare you well. I wish you no harm, but I am convinced you are no real friend of my country. You’re simply indifferent and, to tell the ugly truth, not a little selfish.